


just listen to the quiet.

by fairyhill



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Coping, Other, Police Brutality, from daisy's hunt days, takes place shortly after the intervention, the one where the crew tells jon to stop eating peoples trauma, they are best friends ok
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-07
Updated: 2020-05-07
Packaged: 2021-03-02 19:15:09
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,321
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24051952
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/fairyhill/pseuds/fairyhill
Summary: “I want to rip the words out of somebody. It’s like— like—”She knocks her knee against his. “It’s like you’ll die without it. Like you’ll fade away into nothing.”in which jon and daisy have similar hungers.
Relationships: Jonathan Sims & Alice "Daisy" Tonner
Comments: 22
Kudos: 120





	just listen to the quiet.

Daisy finds Jon sitting on the steps behind the archives. The wind is cold, the sky is grey. He looks small, so small, like something she could crush beneath her heel; he’s drowning in his jacket, folded into himself.

“Hey,” she says.

“Hey,” he answers, scooting aside to make room for her on the concrete next to him. She’s oddly grateful for the gesture.

They sit in silence for a few minutes. Daisy thinks about burning bridges, of flames licking at already crumbling wood.

And then, out of the blue: “Have you got a cigarette?”

Daisy frowns. “I thought you quit.”

Jon shrugs. “Have you got one?”

She studies him for a moment. His face is kept carefully blank, but his hands are twisting at the hem of his jacket. Daisy knows fear when she sees it.

_ Don’t bare your teeth unless you’re prepared to get blood on them. _

“Alright,” she sighs. “Out with it.”

“Sorry?”

“What’s wrong?” She stretches her legs out in front of her, again catching herselves unawares by just how  _ big _ she is compared to him, how tall compared to this wiry creature. She remembers pressing her blade to his throat, threatening to spill his blood like a hunting dog would a rabbit. Yet another feast for her master. As if in response, she catches a glimpse of the scar, pale against his dark skin.

Jon doesn’t lie to her. He leans his head against the railing and says, “I’m hungry.”

“What, you’re sulking because no one’s making you a sandwich?” she laughs, patting his knee mockingly. “There, there, I’ll whip one up for you.”

He bats her hand away, but there’s no real malice in it. “Not that way. I feel  _ hungry _ . I want—” Breathe in, breathe out. She can almost hear the jackrabbit that is his heart, throwing itself against his ribs, coming away bruised and battered. “The statements aren’t enough.”

_ Oh _ , she thinks.

“And, and,” he continues, “I can’t stop it. I want to— I want to  _ take _ them from people. I, I said I would stop and the resolution, it helped for a while but now it’s all I can think about, I—” He’s rambling, barely aware of what he’s saying, staring down at his hands like the answers to all of life’s mysteries are hidden somewhere in the burns and the palm lines. Daisy understands, that strange desperation, that  _ I don’t want to do this anymore _ .

“I want to rip the words out of somebody. It’s like— like—”

She knocks her knee against his. “It’s like you’ll die without it. Like you’ll fade away into nothing.”

“Yes. Exactly like that.” He lets out a shaking breath. “When did things get so awful?”

Daisy laughs, a low sound that comes from some well of filthy, bitter water at the heart of her. “There wasn’t any getting. You just started to realize is all.”

Jon shakes his head, like he’s trying to dislodge something. “No. No, things got this way. Because now Martin’s gone and Tim’s dead and Sasha’s— Sasha’s out of the picture. And now this.”

Daisy closes her eyes. The wind is cold on her face. She lets herself drift.

“How do you do it?”

“Do what?” she asks, eyes still closed. Pebbles are digging into the heels of her palms where she’s put them flat against the concrete. Her foot is falling asleep.

“This,” he says, and she can almost see the way he gestures alongside the word, hands encompassing the entirety of their situation, the  _ this _ ness of it.

She opens her eyes. “Look at me,” she says.

He looks at her, eyes unsure. He looks so vulnerable. He looks like what he really is: Young and afraid. He looks like something she could sink her teeth into.

“Listen to the quiet,” she says.

“What?”

She holds a finger up to her lips and he closes his mouth. They sit and they listen to the quiet. Somewhere beyond the borders of the archives, she can hear life as it trundles along in it’s glorious mundanity. A cricket chirps in the grass. A bird hops along a branch in one of the scraggly trees back here, performing only for itself.

Jon swallows. She sees his throat working around some emotion only he can feel. She feels his leg, warm where it’s pressed up against her own. 

Slowly, he begins to unwind himself. She can almost see the pent-up desire as it seeps out of him.

“It wants you to want,” she says quietly. “It thrives on it. But there’s more beyond it.”

He shakes his head. “It’s so much.”

“It’s too much,” she corrects. “But you’re more.”

He lets out a rueful laugh. “To think a few months ago that the great Daisy Tonner would be giving me self-affirming speeches.”

“You’re an idiot, Jonathan Sims,” she says fondly.

He smiles, but it begins to slip away as the minutes pass.

“You’re thinking again,” she says.

He turns to face her. “Is this what it was like for you?” he asks. “All those years, starving for more?”

She doesn’t like thinking about the her from before. She remembers the words of one of the men she’d brought in with Basira, before everything, some low-level drug-man with an unpleasant, twisted face and a body as lithe and sinuous as a ferret.

_ Honoured it’s you that copped me _ , he’d spat at her as she’d shoved him into the back of their cruiser.  _ London’s very own rabid dog _ .

She’d wanted to slap him, to watch as teeth flew from his mouth and his nose poured blood, wanted to hear him scream as she ruined him. Instead, she’d given him a tight, cold smile before slamming the door to the cruiser shut.

She’d found him, once he’d gotten out. She’d made him beg her to stop. She’d relished the sounds of his bones breaking. She’d taken joy in the blood on her hands. And at the end she’d leaned in real close to his bloodied, beaten face and said:

_ You got someone special back home? Found this in your wallet _ . And she’d held up the photograph so she could see the look in his face as he took in the snapshot: him and another man, arms around each other’s waists. The other man was tall, stocky, with something amused tucked into his beetle-black eyes.

_ Hmm, thought as much _ , she’d said, straightening up and tearing the photograph to shreds.  _ You stay out of my way, fucker. And don’t tell anyone about what happened today. Or I’ll find this man and I’ll make you watch every second of what I do to him. _

How many like him? she asked herself now. How many?

She could never know. Their names were buried alongside the version of her that had taken such pleasure in violence and death, in the sick, perverted justice she’d doled out so freely, the one that had rationalized her actions with  _ They’re just as bad as you. They’ve killed, too. Like calls to like, Tonner, don’t you forget that. _

“Yes,” she finally answers him. “Like that and worse.”

“And how did you deal with it? How did you move on?”

She takes his hand in her own, feels the scars and the callouses against her own rough skin. “I didn’t,” she says. “I just listen to the quiet and I beg for forgiveness.”

They’re both silent for a heartbeat. Daisy wonders where that man is now, if he’s still with the tall, stocky man from the photograph. She wonders if he knows about her. She wonders what he imagines doing to her.

“Come on,” she says finally. “Up you get. We’re making you a sandwich, and then we’re going to make an effigy of Elias and set it on fire.”

Jon laughs, and she thinks she’d die a hundred deaths to make him laugh like that again, to make him happy.

“Okay,” he says. “Let’s go.”

**Author's Note:**

> anyway, jon and daisy's friendship is criminally underrepresented. any and all comments/kudos are appreciated!
> 
> follow me on [tumblr](https://sannikov-land.tumblr.com).


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